[guest post by Dana]

So, gender fluidity. It’s all the rage and its proponents are determined to make sure kids get indoctrinated early on, because as every good progressive knows, get ’em while they’re young!

Not content to let boys be boys and girls be girls, middle school students will be introduced to the idea that gender is not simply a male or female proposition:

One of the nation’s largest public school systems is preparing to include gender identity to its classroom curriculum, including lessons on sexual fluidity and spectrum – the idea that there’s no such thing as 100 percent boys or 100 percent girls.

Fairfax County Public Schools released a report recommending changes to their family life curriculum for grades 7 through 12. The changes, which critics call radical gender ideology, will be formally introduced next week.

…

The plan calls for teaching seventh graders about transgenderism and tenth graders about the concept that sexuality is a broader spectrum

The curriculum will focus on the following:

“Students will be provided definitions for sexual orientation terms heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality; and the gender identity term transgender,” the district’s recommendations state. “Emphasis will be placed on recognizing that everyone is experiencing changes and the role of respectful, inclusive language in promoting an environment free of bias and discrimination.”

Eighth graders will be taught that individual identity “occurs over a lifetime and includes the component of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

“Individual identity will also be described as having four parts – biological gender, gender identity (includes transgender), gender role, and sexual orientation (includes heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual).”

The district will also introduce young teenagers to the “concept that sexuality is a broader spectrum.”

This is only the beginning. As students move into high school, building on the middle school foundation they will be taught that “one’s sexuality develops over a lifetime”…

Responding to the announced plan, Andrea Lafferty, president of Traditional Values Coalition, foresees a disturbing end result:

“At the end of this is the deconstruction of gender – absolutely. The majority of people pushing (this) are not saying that – but that clearly is the motivation.”

And with a straight face, School Board spokesman John Torre claimed the proposed curriculum changes have nothing to do with the board’s vote last week which made it permissible for boys who identify as girls to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice.

What a coincidence…

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

As of today, George Stephanopoulos has apologized three times for his failure to disclose that he made personal contributions to the Clinton Foundation. Contrary to the original report with its manipulative title, Stephanopoulos acknowledged the donation only after he was found out. And now he has apologized three times and what, wants a gold medal for honesty? I am so over apology tours. Fully admit you screwed up and got caught, apologize for it and then do the honorable thing. Without having to be told. It’s that last bit that causes people so much trouble.

Anyway, as Eric Wemple notes, in spite of the three apologies made by Stephanopoulos, there is still the problem of ABC:

Unresolved by Stephanopoulos’s repeated meae culpae is the conduct of ABC News’s PR operation, which stands accused of “running” to Politico with the story of Stephanopoulos’s donations after having received an inquiry from the Washington Free Beacon. Staffers from the Washington Free Beacon attest that they received official statements after ABC News provided them to Politico.

Wemple has still not received a reply from ABC regarding his inquiry into the matter as discussed here.

With that, former ABC News colleague Carole Simpson doesn’t believe Stephanopoulos is a journalist:

There is a coziness that George cannot escape,” said Simpson, who toiled for two decades at ABC News, notably as the weekend anchor of World News Tonight from 1988 to 2003. “While he did try to separate himself* from his political background to become a journalist, he really isn’t a journalist.”

Further:

…Simpson said she was “dumbfounded” by Thursday’s revelation that Stephanopoulos failed to disclose $75,000 in recent donations to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation—this, as he conducted a confrontational April 26 interview with Clinton Foundation critic Peter Schweizer.

“I wanted to just take him by the neck and say, ‘George, what were you thinking?’ Clearly, he was not thinking. I thought it was outrageous,” Simpson said. “And I am sorry that again the public trust in the media is being challenged and frayed because of the actions of some of the top people in the business.”

And Simpson suggests ABC is not exactly happy with their esteemed anchor, either:

ABC has made him the face of ABC News, the chief anchor, and I think they’re really caught in a quandary here. While ABC says this was ‘an honest mistake,’ they don’t feel that way. Secretly, they are hopping mad, I am sure.”

The network chief anchors are dropping like flies. You have to wonder if there’s a bit of squirming going on at CBS right about now.

*I’m not sure what Stephanopoulos did that evidenced an attempt to separate himself from politics (Clinton), but clearly, whatever it was didn’t work.

–Dana

This article by Daniel J. McCraw at Politico is a work of pure genius. Why, I can’t spot a single fallacy in it! It is titled: The GOP Is Dying Off. Literally (Google cache link):

There’s been much written about how millennials are becoming a reliable voting bloc for Democrats, but there’s been much less attention paid to one of the biggest get-out-the-vote challenges for the Republican Party heading into the next presidential election: Hundreds of thousands of their traditional core supporters won’t be able to turn out to vote at all.

The party’s core is dying off by the day.

Since the average Republican is significantly older than the average Democrat, far more Republicans than Democrats have died since the 2012 elections. To make matters worse, the GOP is attracting fewer first-time voters. Unless the party is able to make inroads with new voters, or discover a fountain of youth, the GOP’s slow demographic slide will continue election to election. Actuarial tables make that part clear, but just how much of a problem for the GOP is this?

Our rocket political scientist then runs the numbers. Why, if you take all of the people who voted for Mitt Romney, and then subtract out how many are already dead or will die, you can easily see that the GOP numbers are dwindling! No fallacies there!

What about the effect of people moving from one age bracket into another? McGraw has you covered! You see, there are a lot of teenagers who are going to become voters when they turn 18. So when you add all those new Democrats to the voting rolls, and subtract all the dead old Republican voters, the result is a Giant New Bonanza of Democrat voters!

I’m going to ask the question again, McGraw:

What about the effect of people moving from one age bracket into another? Hint: teenagers are not the only group who are moving into different age brackets.

Nowhere in McGraw’s analysis is there any mention of the fact that all people in the nation are becoming older. Indeed, it’s kind of a thing humans tend to do. As They Might Be Giants once pointed out, you’re older than you’ve ever been — and now you’re even older. (And now you’re older still.)

And this keeps happening.

Now, if McGraw has some evidence that, over time, fewer older people are voting Republican, he might have a point. But that is clearly not the case. American Thinker has the numbers, and the percentage of older voters voting Republican has steadily increased in the past two decades, from 39% in 1992 to 56% in 2012. Meanwhile, as we are constantly reminded by people justifiably concerned with the demographics of Social Security, the population in general is aging.

This fallacy is similar to the fallacy of those pushing income inequality as a problem, while ignoring the fact that people tend to move into higher income brackets as they age — acquiring both greater savings, and greater skills commanding a higher salary. Even if everyone were paid the same salary at the same age, saved at the same rate, and received raises at the same rate, there would be income and wealth disparities owing to this dynamic process.

Instead, McGraw slices off GOP voters at the older end where they are dying, adds more Democrats at the younger end where they are attaining adulthood — and blithely ignores the fact that, every day, populations of young people are turning into GOP voters as they acquire life experience and a stake in society. As you age, you learn that ideals are not what matter, results are. And you tend to vote GOP more as a result (not because the GOP gets results, but because they do a better job of giving lip service to the values of limited government and freedom).

McGraw ignores all this, and Politico says: hey, great analysis! Let’s publish that!

Par for the course.